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- Secret code **HEADS can be unveiled!
- Discovered that I completely misinterpreted Russel Brand
- FOUND HOKEY POKEY ICE CREAM!
- YAWA gigs in London (including Camden Crawl!) and Glasgow
- Tailored a labcoat
- Went to “The Rot”
- Watched the Book of Eli with Rachie whilst eating her cakes

Secret Code: **HEADS – Unveiled

The Heads in question belong to propellers. Well, just one since the company is actually Propellerhead singular. They make Reason – the software that I make tutorials with, and they asked me to take part in their “Music Making Month” because I’m a “Reason Power User” (they had me at “Power”).

Turns out the guys at Propellerhead know I exist – in fact, they watch my videos. They’re really nice too, and have a good sense of humour – when I suggested doing a silly promo video involving me talking to a giant reason logo in the sky (link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys0nFXud_aE)for my contribution to the Music Making Month, they suggested that they get the actual voice of Propellerhead’s official tutorials to be the “voice of reason”. If a company can spend time and resources on an unnecessary joke, they’re good in my book.

Anyway, my contribution of a 7 day song on Dance Pop (Rachie helped with the vocals, turned out well imo, mega catchy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sDDHEnyk5Q) culminated in a live session online talking about the song and answering questions from the audience. Ryan, the interviewer guy, was great and it felt kinda like a radio show – with him filtering the questions. I felt like Frasier or something. Except without Kelsey Grammar’s awesome radio voice.

The session went smoothly (Despite the fact that, as Ryan pointed out, I was releasing my 13th 7 day song on Friday the 13th – hence his bad-luck-warding foil hat) and I had loads of fun. I really want to look into live sessions again because there’s something freeing about not having to spend hours preparing for some content for a change and just going with the flow.

Russel Brand is actually incredible.

Check out this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-NCDovAWB8

What. The. Hell. I first saw him on “Big Brother’s Little Brother” with my sister (we only watched about 2 seasons, not proper addicts) and how the hell does that crude idiot transmogrify (in his words) into that eloquent, insightful man?

Crazy.

Hokey Pokey?!

When I lived in the United Arab Emirates back in 1999, there was a flavour of ice-cream I found in a random service station between Sharjah and Dubai called “Hokey Pokey”. I don’t like chocolate, and most obscure flavours tend to incorporate it – I love obscure flavours, however, so upon finding this one which contained Honeycomb, Caramel and white chocolate, it made a lasting impact on my life. I did not find it again until about a week ago, where I saw it in Millie’s Cookies in Telford Town Center. BEST. ICE CREAM. EVER.

There’s not many things I remember with such a vivid and positive clarity, I have no idea why this ice cream flavour should be amongst those few, but it is and I loved it enough to think it was worth mentioning. Weird.

YAWA gigs

YAWA played Camden Crawl which was fun, we opened the Red Bull outdoor stage and whilst it took a while for the place to fill up, it was really fun. I did a bit more running around the crowd (perhaps a little too much) than usual which was good – I think all the dance mat excercise has really built up my physical stamina. The sound was awesome as well and all in all it was really fun.

We also played a show up in Glasgow, our first of our tour with Under the Influence who are really nice guys and really tight musically, much better than I was at their age. It was great to see some of the YAWA fans from the Kids in Glass Houses show, and there was even one girl who came to a show YAWA did in Edinburgh about 3 years ago that I ended up talking to in a random house party afterwards that turned up. I love really long and obscure connections like that.

Well that’s a weird request.

In the interests of improving the band’s image, the guys suggested I get one of my labcoats (yes, I have several) fitted, rather than having it loose and baggy. I took it in to a tailor – the first time I’ve been to one since I had my first hokey pokey ice cream – and they were surprisingly accepting of the fact that I apparently rapped in a labcoat, taking it and 2 weeks later returning it all nice and close-fitting. I just hope I don’t end up ripping it whilst running around or getting sharpie on it like all the other ones during the after-show signings at the Kids in Glass Houses shows.

The Rot

I just thought “The Rot” was the best name for a pub ever. Ironically it’s one of the nicest pub atmospheres I’ve seen; I’ve played a lot of pubs and I am well aware of just how dank and depressing they can get. Anyway, not much of a story here – I met a bunch of Rachie’s friends and said a lot of deliberately innappropriate jokes (I find it kinda hard to be appropriate around new people, usually works on stage but not always in smaller company) – fun times!

The coolest christian ever.

If you haven’t seen the book of Eli and like post-apolcalyptic scenarios, awesome fight scenes and Mila Kunis, then you have some film-watching to do. Cheesy as hell but I enjoyed it. Rachie got that for me and also made some caramel creme cakes, which are also something that you should probably experience at some time in your life.

Next Up on Dave’s Blog

Hopefully we’ll be hearing more about secret code **BROKEN, there’s a load more gigs planned and the new boyinaband site is inching closer and closer to completion. Can’t wait, it’s actually something I’d find really useful.

Farewell, Traveller!

- April Fools Hijinks with Boyinaband and YAWA
- YAWA’s ET Cover
- Secret emails that I’ll still keep secret.
- New YAWA song “Visionary” being written
- YAWA radio show appearance
- YAWA Manchester gig
- Frolicking with Reason in a field
- 17 days of video in a row
- Releasing the 7 day Prog House song
- More Secret Stuff that’s biab-ish
- Going swimming where there’s a frickin’ WAVE POOL
- Watched Natural Born Killers
- Danced almost every day (No joke, read on to see why)

GOTCHA! …awww.

You know when you come up with a great idea for a prank but it doesn’t quite go to plan? That happened this april fools. I’m not sure if the law states that means the joke is on me, but in any case, I thought it was pretty funny but it didn’t quite work out.

YAWA released a teaser clip of a new song called “Take the World By Storm” on April 1st – but the clip was just the cymbals track of the new song. Technically it was a teaser. Well, I found it funny, but no-one who heard it understood and just thought something had gone wrong.

Fortunately, the BIAB april fool worked better. My “How to make the greatest hip hop beat ever” video pulled enough lolz to make it worthwhile: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vsYx9T3SxM

You’re an ALIEEEEEEEEN

After hearing Katy Perry’s album at Rachie’s house recently, I was struck with a massive urge to cover “ET” – an absolutely immense song that’s uncharacteristically deep and gorgeous sounding amongst an album of otherwise mostly summery pop music. (BTW – I wikipediad who produced it – Max Martin. Like my favourite pop producer EVER. Check out what he’s done, it’s scary how many MASSIVE number ones can be attributed to him.)

So YAWA did so: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_FrbIrMRx4

I knocked up the music pretty quickly, then kieran did his harmony thang and it ended up being Kieran covering it. So we decided to give me a try at semi-singing the verses. I don’t usually sing on YAWA tracks, but I think it really came across. YouTube seems to think so, we’ve already got over 10,000 views and an overwhelmingly positive reaction to it. Good times!

Secret code: **BROKEN

I love to allude to secret things that are going on (usually something cool I either don’t want to jinx or that might not happen but I’m getting over-excited about it anyway) but things get pretty confusing, so I’ll start giving them codes so you (and I) know which secrets are which.

But yeah, **BROKEN is become very exciting, it may involve some very nice YAWA stuff and also some stuff for me, depending on how things go. Emails have been going back and forth, as have songs. I’ll leave the mystery there for now

Yummy liquid!

Something I can reveal, YAWA’s been venturing into liquid drum and bass territory with a much more chilled song, which is very (but not completely) different to the rest of our stuff – I love it. I’ve got sing-rap vocals on this one too (my rapping generally comes across a lot better when it’s more angry, cocky or desparate sounding, and for a soft verse that doesn’t work so well.) so that’s another change of pace.

On the radio!

YAWA ventured to Shrewsbury to star as BBC Radio Shropshire’s live act for the week. We played 3 of our songs and a cover, and Kieran and Zak gave a memorable interview. I wasn’t allowed because the guys thought I was too “inappropriate” or something. Ah well, I still got an obscure Rebecca Black joke in between some of the songs anyway.

We got that one on film too, Scratch has spliced together the footage – just gotta figure out which bits we’ll internettify and then you guys can see dem songs live! Well, not live, semi-live. Whatever.

In Manchester!

The Dry Bar is a nice little venue – this was a gig where I didn’t feel stressed, which is unusual. I think in general I’m a lot more comfortable with how YAWA has been going lately and where I see it going. Quite a few people there and a fun show overall, not quite as packed as I’d hoped though. Maybe next month when we re-visit I’d give it a good 6/10.

Frolicking with Reason.

I love my job sometimes. Just watch this update video and tell me you wouldn’t do the same kinda thing if you defined what your career entailed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBPUMFRKbp4

Motivation win!

I think it’s a new personal record – I released a video every day for 17 days in a row this month. As a result, the biab stats have shot up and I’ve got a bunch of new subscribers. I love it when hard work pays off. Really pleased with the videos too. Really helps having a video editor so I can concentrate on the content of the videos instead of the splicing of them!

I’ve been using a lot of different motivational techniques lately that might have assisted – I’ve blocked facebook and reddit on my computer during the week, found www.ifeelunmotivated.com, and I’ve really organised my GQueues. To be honest, the biggest thing I think is the blocking of those sites: “Chrome Nanny” is the extension I’ve used, you should Google dat Shizz.

It goes around!

Thanks to sketch’s vocals and www.filtuh.com‘s backing, the new 7 day song on Prog House has been put out. Turns out it’s more electro than prog house in a lot of ways, but the reaction is still good – I’m really proud of the drop. Just gotta make sure next time it’s a better fit in the genre I’m doing!

Secret code: **HEADS

Another cool email, another potentially awesome thing happening. This one’s a bit more boyinaband related and I ended up writing a script for a potential video the other day. Really cool stuff.

WAVE POOL

I frickin’
love wave pools. I mean, log flumes are fun, but nothing like being flung about by masses of water. People like weird things.

Got to go in the second sauna of my life too, which was populated mainly by overweight old men. Kinda uncomfortable when one sits just that bit too close to you, with a towel you desperately hope will continue to cling on for dear life around a terrifying waist.

But yes, good times – Rachie and I also spent ages going round in circles in this awesome stream thing that had a channel of water continually going round, with a waterfall I continually dunked her under. I’m sure you’d've done the same thing. That’s what she gets for being better at swimming than me.

Crazy film.

But it’s not all water and waves – Rachie sat me down to watch Natural Born Killers recently, telling me the way it was done is really clever – and it was, I just didn’t really relate to any of the characters and the cleverness of it was kinda distracting to me. Some cool bits, but I remember the last time I tried to watch it with Kirstie aaaaaages ago, I couldn’t get to the end before having to switch to watching 300 (awesome film!)

Get ready to step… step… step!

A while ago I got a dance mat. I really enjoy dance mat games, so I figured to get into the excercising spirit I should splash out on some equipment I’d actually enjoy.

I used it for a few days, then it hit the shelf (well, it got stored by my desk, it’s too big for a shelf.)

But at the beginning of April, I set a challenge to see if I could do 30 minutes of excercise a day. With Dance Mat as my weapon of choice, I’ve only missed one day this month. I’ve been a lot more motivated this month as I mentioned, I’m wondering if regular excercise has assisted with that – I feel like motivating yourself to work out breeds more motivation to do more other stuff. It’s also great to let your brain focus on something that isn’t your to-do list for a while, I reckon it lets your subconscious organise everything. I’m sure I read a study on something like that once. Might be a bunch of crap, but seems to be working for me!

Next time on Dave’s Blog

I’m really happy about this month. It’s been horrendously stressful, but lots of good things are happening and lots of work is getting done. I’m really looking forward to seeing how things develop – particularly the boyinaband site, which has been slow on the dev front this month since le web designer has been busy moving house for a big portion of it, but now things can carry on as planned.

Next time I expect to know what I’m doing next month apart from a ridiculous amount of gigs (which are quite scary looking when I attempt to combine them with my boyinaband plans.) This is when I’ll have to put my time management and motivation skills I’ve been working on to the test!

Toodle-pip!

- Released a very special tutorial
- Finished mixing the YAWA SD song first draft mix
- Some really exciting YAWA emails that I’ll keep secret
- A Really cool Dave Day on the boyinaband forum

Hip Hop Hits

So I’ve been planning this tutorial since mid-way through last year and finally did it. I’m really pleased with the result:

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9thbaXOAGM

It’s the fastest growing video I’ve had so far, 5000 views 3 days after uploading it and almost 400 likes. Propellerheads Software promoted it and it got loads of people on their Facebook/Twitter watching it and saying they enjoyed it. Success! I definitely want to try more clever content creation like this.

The Chase!

The collaboration song between YAWA and Silent Descent is approaching completion – I’ve mixed it on my end and now it’s just a case of getting the last bits from the SD lads and putting it out on the internets! Can’t wait to see the reaction from both bands’ fanbases.

I really like the song, incidentally. Keep getting it stuck in my head.

It’s a Secret.

I told you it was a secret.

It’s potentially good though. Like, “Hey Dave, you know your wildest dreams? Here you go.” good.

A Chatty Dave Day

I moved the recently installed Chat box on the forum to the top of the page and instantly conversation started happening. It was awesome – loads of ideas for the site and loads of musical discussion. Pretty much exactly the kind of thing I hoped the site would encourage. A strong community and a musical community.

I honestly cannot wait for some of my ideas to come into fruition regarding the site, they have so much potential.

Next Time on Dave’s Blog

All in all this has been one of the most exciting, accomplished, promising and best weeks of my life. I feel like I’m getting somewhere. Finally. I love that feeling. It’s almost as good as when I beat Rachie and her family at Risk the other day (Oh, did I forget to mention? Yeah, it ain’t no thang.)

Good times. Next time should involve more good secret news that I shall allude to in a mysterious manner, more boyinaband video goodness and I want to chuck in some songwriting in there too.

Adios amigos!

- Silent Descent Music Video
- Collaborated with Silent Descent on a song
- 7 Day Song nearly ready
- Played a lot of games (to see if it affects motivation)
- Got Dead Rising 2 for Scratch
- Zimbardo Website test with rachie
- Watched Celldweller UStream
- Got some seriously exciting potential YAWA news
- Decided to work with YAWA’s friend Simon as a manager
- Asked a bunch of questions to the biab community
- Found Khan Academy
- Uploaded Primeloops interviews
- Finished Biab competition
- Uploaded Superior Drummer vids

Now that’s kind of a mess, so I’ll categorise things a bit more:

Silent Descent-y-ness

4 hour car journeys are generally things I like to avoid, but I made an exception for Silent Descent’s music video. Driving down to London, Rachie in tow (not literally, though that’d be pretty funny to watch), we spent the day with Ogre playing board games and generally geeking out, then spent the following day in the company of more metal than I’d been exposed to in the entirety of the past year.

We even dressed up – Rachie having Nu Rocks from her misguided goth-y youth and Me having Cyberdog-y goodness from my Interabang costume. It was also one of the only places where my hair made me fit in.

We were instructed to dance about energetically in the freezing cold for about an hour, with shooting pillars of fire and brimstone (maybe not the brimstone), before we were forced to take our leave before we’d be driving back to the Midlands at 6am. It was a great excuse to see the SD guys, since it’s one of the few bands that I get on with (Not that most bands are asses, I’m just not particularly sociable in that respect)

They also came to me the following weekend for a weekend of songwritery. I wasn’t too sure about how it’d turn out, since I’ve heard too many cooks can spoil the trance-metal, but it was actually the best writing session I’ve had in a long time – it was great to be able to swap over when I was stumped/tired/uninspired and between Myself, Kieran, Cal, Jaco and Tom we pretty much wrote the song in one go (with a little break to sleep and for the guys to get horrendously inebriated on cheap alcohol).

I really like the song too, I’m in the process of mixing it and it should come out in a week or so if all goes to plan.

Boyinaband-y-ness

Again, things are progressing with biab!

The site design is slowly but surely coming together. It’s starting to look less like a mess of plugins and more like a useful website.

I’ve chucked out a load of videos; An interview with the guys from Primeloops I did back in January, review and tutorial for Superior Drummer 2, the first community question and announcing the competition winner (Mizuki’s last chance – awesome guy with and awesome song/tutorial)

I’ve also been working hard on the next 7 day song… Let’s just say that you might need a ladder for it.

Game-y-ness

I’ve decided to try gaming a lot more this month to see if it makes me more relaxed so I can be more motivated in the long run. So far so good I think, quite a bit has happened this month and I’ve still managed to enjoy a balanced diet of Puzzle Quest 2, Kongregate mini games and Dead Rising 2, which I bought Scratch as a thank you for editing video for me and he kindly allowed me to play it.

Nothing like strapping a battery to a rake and attacking hordes of undead to make you want to make more tutorials.

TED-y-ness

I’ve watched quite a few TED talks lately, with a few that stand out – One of which is by a dude called Zimbardo. A psychologist that Rachie assures me is awesome, he talks about the perception of time and how people who are able to delay gratification are usually much more successful in life – He did a test where he gave kids the opportunity to have 1 marshmellow now or 2 marshmellows later – the kids that waited did considerably better on their SAT scores later in life. Really interesting stuff.

The other one that sticks out was by Salman Khan who made Khanacademy.org – a site that basically turns education into a stats-heavy game. Which kids have apparently loved due to the badges and achievements kind of model rather than the “Because I say so” model of homework encouragement.

It’s also very similar to some of the ideas I had for boyinaband in the future. Though fortunately not similar enough to be worried!

YAWA-y-ness

New songs, a new music video and new gigs have all been worked on. Things are progressing – especially with the assistance of our mate Simon joining us as a manager. He’s got a lot of experience with the inside of the industry and, conveniently, he believes in and enjoys YAWA. Can’t wait to see how some of his ideas go!

Other-y-ness

I watched a cool UStream of Celldwellers one morning, which has made me want to do a UStream thingummy for YAWA/Boyinaband at some point – such a cool idea getting live online events going on! Quite a unique opportunity to speak directly to the crowd.

And there we have it! A (slightly messy) update of what’s been happening!

I’ll keep you posted, since there are a few things that could pan out (as there always seem to be…) that could make this blog much more interesting in the near future!

They’re strange, as are many of the situations I’ve been since the previous installment. I’ve been

- Partying with Rachie for her 18th
- At Many more band practices than usual
- In Tinchy Strider’s shoes
- In A Mud Shower in a Spa
- In the client’s seat for a change (Serious business!)
- Releasing new video types

My girlfriend can drink now.

After just over a year of being together, Rachie is finally able to drink without the threat of criminal prosecution. Something she’s been looking forward to, since the idea of clubbing, a convenient by-product of being alcohol-eligible, has always appealed to her. More on that later.

After a nice little get-together on the day of her birth, where I gave her my gift (It was a recorder cleaning device, since I thought she might want to play a clean recorder. I also got her a recorder in case she didn’t have a recorder. Turned out she already had two recorders, but I guess she now has a spare in case she loses her other two recorders.) and we ate some of her delicious home made cakes, delicately fashioned into the shapes of mice and owls.

Since I didn’t want to get chocolate (mice) and coconut (owls) mixed together (since I’m anti-chocolate), I avoided acting out the scene of cake-based violence that immediately entered my head upon realising the darwinian relationship of their shapesakes. Fortunately, the following day would make up for any messiness I had missed out on.

You see, the following day involved clubbing. Rachie hired a room at a local Bar, invited a bunch of her and my friends and we all went down and got relatively crunk. Even Ogre came, which was awesome, since he had a pretty epic journey. It’s great when friends are reliable and dedicated.

Inevitably, it seems, alcohol wormed its way into the proceedings and after a few genres of music (the DJ cycled seamlessly through dance, pop, rap, dubstep, 80s cheese, 90s cheese and into dance again) everyone was ready to go home and regret not drinking water and eating bread before hitting the hay.

Except Rachie had made up her mind to visit a club called “Gorgeous”. It turned out to be a gay bar, which apparently her and her friends thought it would be funny to see if I was hit on, since apparently I look like the kind of person that would suit such a venue.

Now I’m no homophone, but I can’t stand gaze. Not really, and you can steal that quote if you’d like (I’m quite proud of it). The patrons of the bar were quite hilarious to watch, since a large majority seemed to take the village people on face value and get topless and dance with extraordinary tenacity.

I also encountered Dirty Dutch music for the first time, which seemed even more repetitive and less melodic than every other genre of house I’ve encountered (quite a feat) so it’s nice to know where electronic music is headed.

We left the bar without an incident of being hit on, though I did make eye contact with a random chav that was pointing at some lesbians making out and doing a thumbs up.
After a ridiculously long wait for a late night McDonalds, we headed home and got some well deserved rest. I get the feeling Rachie has caught the clubbing bug; mainly since she’s been whining at me to go to Gatecrasher with her ever since. Still not convinced it’s the kind of place I’d enjoy, but maybe that’s just based on a few negative experiences in previous clubs.

YAWA: Assemble!

We’ve been getting our serious hats on (metaphorically, only Jamie actually is allowed to wear a hat, according to our stylist.) YAWA is now meeting much more often than before, and as such “Take the World By Storm” is finished in demo form and we’ve put together a mashup-cover for our radio performance.

If you pop over to our myspace: www.myspace.com/youandwhatarmyuk you can see a bunch of gigs up there too. Busy times all around!

Yeah… We bring the stars out…

Uh-huh, that’s probably going to be something you’ll hear me say in the near future. It’s not giving the game away though, the mashup-cover is considerably varied, with a few other songs thrown in there for fun. We made it for our upcoming stint on Radio Shropshire, which I haven’t been on in two or three years. I wonder if I blogged about it when I did… *thinks back*

Spa-ing (The non-violent kind)

The other half of Rachie’s gift from me was a trip to Fairlawns Spa. I’ve never experienced Saunas, steam rooms (which didn’t involve clubbing together to play Team Fortress), or mud showers.

Arriving at a stately-looking place, we checked in and, at Rachie’s defiant instruction, changed into robes, which we proceeded to wear for the duration of our stay. Well, apart from the meal, a four-course monster, which actually made me so uncomfortably full that I couldn’t lie down for about an hour and instead had to pace around the room wishing there was a deity I could ask to stop the pain.

Delicious, though.

So the treatments. Let’s be quick since I’ve already essayed it up with this post – Steam rooms = uncomfortably humid. Saunas = uncomfortably hot. Mud showers = not mud baths, which was kinda disappointing, and no cucumber was involved, however it was an excuse to black up in a socially acceptable context. I mean, something not racist.

All in all it was really relaxing, however – which doesn’t seem to make any sense looking back on the intensity of the treatments, but I guess the whole didn’t equal the sum of its parts.

Or I just really enjoy wandering about in a robe.

Web Dev Dave

Web Dev Dave is actually a nickname I’ll never use, as far as I’m guessing – I’m alright, but when you compare me to other people, I don’t really stand up. That’s why I’ve got a dude on-board who knows his stuff to help develop the new boyinaband site ideas I’ve put out in the past few months.

This means I can actually make videos, since I was struggling to balance between community development and content creation (yeah, I know internet business words.)

I cannot wait for the final result. It’s already looking exciting (well, working excitingly, we’re doing function before fashion – a concept I’ve been alien to since being with Rachie) and hopefully it won’t be more than a month-ish before something can be released!

Vidz

So with the web development out of the road, I released some videos reviewing, demo-ing and tutorial-ing Superior Drummer 2 on boyinaband.com, and I’ve been working on the new videos. Including the one which involves announcing the winner of the dirty bass composition competition I’ve been running! Most of the judging has been done. I love my job.

Next Week on Dave’s Blog…

Dave will be getting up to some CER-AZY hijinks, such as…

- Heading down to London to be in a music video
- Finishing the next 7 day song song. (hehe… song song.)
- Announcing the winner of the boyinaband Dirty Bass Composition Competition
- Watching the test site development get closer to being finished

Adios!

It involved…

- Writing/producing a good deal of the new YAWA song
- Finishing uploading the 7 day spotlight on Silent Descent
- Coming up with an idea for a website that I could see being in the top 5 websites in the world one day
- Having an unconventional valentines day

Take the World By Storm

If I hadn’t mentioned already, the new song is titled that, with the main chorus hook being the same lyric.

It’s frickin’ heavy, has a djenty, powerful feel with some awesome synthy overtones; it’s great to go back to some more intricate and interesting music.

I think it’ll be the first one to challenge our musicianship for a while.

Silent Descent!

I got to promote one of my favourite unsigned acts with the 7 day spotlight on boyinaband – giving Tom Callahan recognition for his awesome production work and the band some well-deserved recognition.

A bunch of people commented on their music video saying they were from biab, which made me swell with pride. I think I need a boyinaband flag to be patriotic with. Though I don’t think it’s patriotism if it’s a website.

Anyway, sleep-deprived rambling aside, it’s got thousands of views and the audience liked it, so I’ll look into doing more 7 day spotlights as soon as I can find more artists to do them with!

The Social Network eat your heart out

Well, not just yet, since I haven’t successfully become a web zillionaire from my idea yet, but when I was completely unable to sleep last night I thought up a concept for a website that could change the world. Not that I’m an idealist or anything.

So now to actually make it!

Happy v-v-valentines d-d-day!

I spent a large portion of this year’s corporate love day wrapped in 3 layers of blankets shivering, since cupid accidentally hit me with a poisoned arrow, it seems.

It’s times like that when having a Rachie really has its benefits. She looked after me, and after a short nap I was well enough to get up and watch a TV show on hate speech and child abuse in mulsim faith schools. All in all, a romantic end to a romantic evening.

She also made me a mix CD of songs that reminded her of me, including MSI – bitches, which I was pleased about. And a card from funkypigeon.com – fantastic.

Next time on Dave’s Blog

It’s Rachie’s 18th birthday coming up, so this week I’ll have:

- Rachie’s Birthday
- Rachie’s Party
- Hang out time with my homeslice Ogre (who’s coming up for the party, yay!)
- Boyinaband reviewing (Superior drummer to be precise!)
- Possibly some new developments on the tutorial system for boyinaband.com

- Interviewing Misha Mansoor of Periphery
- The League of Extraordinary Djentlemen show
- Went to Aled of Kids in Glass Houses’ Surprise Party
- Released a YAWA cover of “Matters at all” by KIGH
- Went to Preston to my sister’s friend’s Hip-Hop themed party
- Started the 2nd boyinaband competition
- Did the 7 Day Song on Dirty Dubstep
- Visited Primeloops HQ

It’s frickin’ Bulb!

Last blog I mentioned an awesome opportunity… well that opportunity was that  Periphery’s manager had said I should be able to interview Misha Mansoor, Periphery’s guitarist.

Now if you didn’t know, Misha ‘Bulb’ Mansoor is one of my all-time favourite producers – he was the reason I got an axe fx and superior drummer 2, I listen to Periphery’s album more than any other music and a few days ago on Feb 1st, I got to meet the guy and interview him for boyinaband.

It’s quite surreal meeting someone you’ve idolised for so long, but he was so ridiculously down to earth and friendly that I found it difficult not to be comfortable in his presence, despite the fact that I would kill underprivelaged children to get his production skill.

Can’t wait to get the video edited together – what an awesome dude.

It’s frickin’ Periphery! (And Tesseract… and monuments…)

The other good thing about Feb 1st was the gig itself – it’s been ages since I’ve bought gig tickets of my own accord, even longer since I’ve been properly excited for a show. It was totally worth it.

3 bands I’m really into were playing; Monuments are what I’d describe as an incredible fusion of limp bizkit and sikth, which really works. Talented and crazy, with a hint of rapping every now and again which I love. Some fantastic riffs too.

Tesseract had the best sound of the night, especially the vocalist, who clearly knows his stuff – as did the sound man, every vocal nuance was captured. Sounded along the lines of Jared Leto meets Chester bennington with a dash of Matt Bellamy every now and again. Ridiculously talented musicians as well, but the vocals are what made it really stand out.

Periphery was just mind-blowing though. The previous bands had done a lot of epic posing to suit their style. Misha came on stage and put his hands together into a heart shape and pulled an over-enthusiastic smile at the crowd. I love the lol-factor associated with that band.

Great fun singing along to a set I know 90% of the songs to, and the musicianship was predictably exquisite – especially since when we ended up chatting at the merch stand at the end of the show, they explained they only had one (!) practice before the shows.

We also got to chat to Jake Bowen and Alex Bois, the other guitarists for a decent amount of time after the Periphery interviews, where Alex lived up to the promise on Periphery’s album that he has the “Arse of a skunk” (There are a variety of lyrical themes discussed on that album)

O hai Aled!

You really do feel like a rock star when your band is invited to a rock star’s birthday bash.

A big ol’ trek down to Wales culminated in an awesome party with crazy DJing (I think there was a Metallica/Gaga remix at one point) and lychee juice, which I thoroughly enjoy and recommend.

It was awesome to chat to the guys again, I learned Aled is into his hip hop and dance more than I thought and that he’d actually used my boyinaband tutorials, which was funny to find out! I can’t wait to hear the KIGH dubstep-influenced song on their new album.

Matters at all

We also did a little present for kids since they were so awesome to us on tour, covering their song “Matters at all”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKdHcENtDC0

The guys said they loved it, YAWA’s fan reaction was mixed, but we did try and make it a drastic change. Always good fun to rip a song apart and stitch it back together again with horiffic basses.

Heeeell Yeeeeah

I popped on down to my sister’s abode in Preston for her friend Rob’s (really nice guy) party, which was great fun. She had suggested Rob make it a Hip Hop themed party, and he had obliged, with a playlist that Dre would have been proud of. Too much lil Jon does hurt your head after a while, but with a quick break to get some paracetamol to balance the crunk, it was all gravy.

I got to chat to some Japanese exchange students about N-Dubz too, which is something you don’t often do.

Dirty Basses?

I wanted to see more good tutorials on making dirty basses on the internet, so encouraged it in the only way I know how – giving people free stuff.

The second competition has already had a lot of entries, I can’t wait to see the rest of them, since some of the current submissions are certainly vomit-inducing enough to be worth a listen.

Dirty Dubstep!

The 11th 7 day song was completed a week ago now – it was a hell of a challenge to fit it in around everything that’s been going on lately – but it’s had a good response and I am proud of it, particularly the drums, which I feel really punch more than the previous 7 day songs, thanks to some advice from Silent Descent’s Tom Callahan about parallel compression (incidentally, their 7 day spotlight is being uploaded as we speak!)

Primeloops HQ

I finally got to meet the people I’ve been emailing for the past few years when I decided to go down and interview Primeloops.com for boyinaband – an awesome group of guys who really know their stuff!

We did a nice little interview that I should be chucking up on biab in the next week or so, since I thought advice from people who make sample packs for a living would be useful to an aspiring producer!

Next time on Dave’s Blog

I’m back to work now, and after having put together a media pack for advertising my website’s advertising (inception) I will hopefully get some more adverts going up on the biab site (not loads, I’m not intending to let ads ruin the useability of the site, I hate it when sites do that) so it can fund more cool content in the future!

As well as:

- Some cool biab videos (hopefully including the aformentioned interviews!)
- Finishing a YAWA song (we now practice 3 times a week, so loads gets done )
- Preparing for Rachie’s birthday on the 17th!

This week involved:

- Went to see Proxies live with Rachie! (and featured on a song)
- Testing my drum tone with… Nickleback?!
- Possibly getting one of the most exciting opportunites of my life
- Getting another awesome piece of software
- Promoted the biab forum + album on iTunes
- Invented “Dave Days”
- Worked on the Tutorial system
- Recorded the update video for this month
- Got my twitter on
- Had YAWA practice
- Made a proxies tune
- Uploaded a very specific plan for my future

Proxies ft. Dave

Since Proxies are now on tour, I decided to go listen to the band I’ve been producing. Rachie accompanied me and so after a quick train journey to birmingham and a reasonable Pizza Hut meal, we found ourselves backstage in the Academy 3 chilling with the Proxies guys.

They’d been enjoying the shows so far, but had apparently had some trouble in sound check. They were called to go on stage and did so – finding out the guitar amp was playing up. I think this put them on edge a bit, but they played really well. Quality singing and drumming in particular.

I joined them for the second track “volcano haze” and noticed the crowd were actually getting into it quite a lot. Coming off stage I continued to see the dancing happening. It’s a weird experience seeing your songs being played live by someone else after only ever playing them yourself.

There were a few technical issues with the electronics, but fortunately the performance still came across thanks to the solid drumming and singing. The crowd enjoyed it and so did Rachie and I, who spent the rest of the evening eating sugar cubes backstage.

Successful night!

Nickleback are heavy!

Listen to this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGKU-FZUrHY

The drum intro is heavy as hell; a perfect little loop to test my tone against. Looping it, I managed to match it up quite nicely. This technique I’ve found is really useful for judging just how close to pro your tones are.

Next up I’m looking to improve my guitar tone… a bit of periphery perhaps? Can anyone think of a good song with a heavy and simple bass solo section?

Hopes = skyrocketing

Yeah, I’m not going to go into too much detail, but I’ll just say that if I get a certain email reply again then a certain boy in a certain band will be ecstatic.

Software

Amplitube 3 – A guitar amp modelling plug in is amazing. I only played with it for about 30 mins and got something along the lines of the quality of the axe fx. Makes me wonder whether I went out of my depth getting something as in-depth as the Axe Fx when there are plug-ins that get a similar tone to what I can achieve with it in a year within 30 minutes.

Or perhaps I’ve just learned my tone crafting skills on the Axe-Fx and translated it to Amplitube successfully. Time will tell.

Successful looking businessman

After chucking a successful looking businessman that linked to the forum on the boyinaband header, sign-ups increased by about 5 times as much. Everyone apparently wants to be as successful as the businessman. I figured they might.

Also I can’t wait to see how many people actually support biab by buying the 7 day songs on iTunes!

Dave Days

These are the days where I go on the forum and answer questions/critique songs. It was the only name I could think of despite a solid hour of brainstorming, so I went with it, despite the lame arrogance the name implies. Looking forward to the first one!

Tutorial System

It’s started development, but there’s still a long way to go – lots of changes to the template and I still need to find a decent search plug in for it. It could completely change the dynamic of the site though so I really want to finish it!

Biab Update!

I got my news anchor on for the update video this month. They’re turning into a more interesting affair with Scratch and I attempting to make them more entertaining than simply informative. Edit should be finished by next week.

Tweet Tweet!

I’m getting into the swing of @DavePBrown now, posting anything I find interesting since I assume that’s what I should probably do. I guess that’ll build me a follower base of stats-obsessed psychologists at least!

YAWA Practice

We’ve now got our affairs in order and kinda know our direction. We’ve started work on a cool cover and a new song I’ve been working on is closer to completion. Hopefully some of the contacts we’ve acquired from the competition will pay off in the next few weeks!

Prox-step

I’ve been trying to work dubstep into some of the songs I’ve been writing lately with varying degrees of success, but with the Massive plug-in, it just lends itself to developing awesome moving bass sounds so I’m much happier with the results. Can’t wait to finish it off!

The long term plan!

last week I explained what I wanted to do this year. If for some reason you want to know what I want to do for the next several years, check it out on davidpaulbrown.com/my-dream

Next week on Dave’s Blog

If all goes well I should:

- Hear back about the exciting opportunity
- Go to an awesome party
- Release the biab update video
- Release the second biab competition
- Start work on the 7 day song tutorial for this month

See you next week!

This whole week has been full of me deciding what I intend to do with my year (which in turn had me deciding what I intend to do with my life) and as a result of all the books on motivation and psychological methods of getting things done I’ve read recently, I was very specific. More so than normal. In fact, every goal has some form of statistic associated with it. But more on that later.

Let’s start with the week, then do the obligatory fun end-of-year/start-of-year recap!

This week entailed:

- Writing some freakin’ awesome music with Komplete 7
- Progressing with the boyinaband site development
- Celebrating the extra “1″ we get to write in the date for a while.

Choons!

As I predicted, getting hold of Massive seriously inspired me. That, combined with some great guitar tutorials from this dude called Ola Englund, got me writing some more music after quite a dry spell.

One is a dubsteppy dancey tune with djenty guitar, lots of chopping and changing and while I have no idea how it’d be pulled off live, it’d be seriously fun in a club environment. The bass positively saws through the mix; I love massive!

The other is nice and heavy – a YAWA tune that I feel compensates for the lighter songs we’ve been writing as of late. It started out akin to I am the Navigator, but has taken quite a different direction, which is fun!

Can’t wait to show you guys the finished results

Tutorial System update

On the forum there’s been some healthy discussion on the topic of the new site ideas and it’s almost time to go ahead with making the test site. Exciting stuff! Possibly also adding a Chat Room if all goes to plan, which quite a few people have requested.

New Year celebrations!

Nothing too fancy this year, I opted to spend the day with my family, who I rarely spend time with lately due to my obsessive need to work. Shloer made the event considerably more merry (I was utterly Gazeboed!) and I woke up in a dumpster in Belgium the following day with a splitting headache and 3000 shares in a local telecommunications firm. Hopefully they won’t go under.

Happy 2011 & New Years Resolutions!

As with the previous 3 years, it’s that time again, folks! Time for a recap on this year.

In 2010, in no particular order, I…

- Didn’t trade in my girlfriend for a younger model
- Won the Red Bull Bedroom Jam competition with You and What Army!
- Went on tour with YAWA supporting Kids in Glass Houses and Boys Like Girls
- Played 5 Festivals including Download, T in the Park and Sonisphere
- Recorded an EP that’ll feature on Rock Sound Magazine
- Made friends with Red Bull
- Upped my music production game again
- Got to the point where I’m able to (just about) sustain myself from my boyinaband.com income
- Released the second YAWA EP and iTunesed it
- Got a Manager and parted ways with a manager
- Went on Holiday to a quaint cottage down south with Rachie
- Released the new look boyinaband site
- Made tons of boyinaband videos
- Did my first interviews for boyinaband with Shirobon and Silent Descent
- Re-decorated my studio into a shiny new studioffice
- Went to Japan and saw my sister
- Wrote a bunch of tunes and got some exciting prospects for Proxies
- Discovered Redditt and wasted too much time learning about the world/looking at rage comics
- Saw my first 3D movie at the cinema
- Made an extensive business plan for boyinaband that never got me any funding
- Went in da studio with a professional producer
- Got a metal dance mat
- Turned 23 with an awesome selection of gifts

At the start of 2010 I said I wanted to:

- Push YAWA harder, play more gigs and release another EP
- Bring my group of friends even closer together
- Blog weekly for the whole year
- Earn enough from boyinaband.com to live off
- Post over 300 boyinaband videos
- Treat boyinaband as more of a business
- Feel like I can produce music to a professional level

I’m certain I achieved the “Push YAWA harder” goal – we had our first major break. In the last new year’s recap I wrote that we just needed a break from a wealthy proprietor. That happened in the form of Red Bull. Did not see that one coming. Playing to like 20,000 people in a few weeks, recording an EP in an external studio and hitting 5 big festivals in the summer, I did not even dare dream we’d be that successful so quickly.   Our fans have shot up and become more hardcore, as this video proves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKzZ92Ic1-I

YAWA has certainly become closer, and with Shortty-E back in the locality we’ve got the gang back together – the trek down to see Chase & Status in december was a long arduous test of our friendship and it worked well. After a 2 week tour you start to know if your band can get on with each other and we managed it fine. I feel like I haven’t been able to see some of my none-YAWA friends as much since things started to take off, which is unfortunate but to be expected I guess. I’ll just have to make more of an effort this year

There were a few times I missed blogging this year, with motivation running thin early on in Feb and then again in August. I did do the majority of the year though! I got one every month, an improvement on last year.

My boyinaband income has increased massively thanks to a combination of hard work, good luck and hard work. I love that I have no boss to answer to (except myself, if I dress up in a suit and stand looking stern at a mirror) and I love that things are only getting better.

I didn’t manage to hit 300 videos, I got up to 223 though, which was over half way to my target from my starting point of about 100 if I remember correctly!

I have got so business this year it hurts. I did a business plan, applied for funding, kitted out the studioffice, made more charts and databases than you can shake a stick at, watched The Lonely Island’s “Like a Boss” video at least 17 times… I certify that goal completed.

Once again I fail to hit the professional sounding music target, but I do feel I’ve improved and I do feel I’m on the right track. I’ve heard the first pro sounding songs that I’ve been a part of writing, which is such an awesome feeling, I learned that it’s not the guitar that’s the problem but everything after it in the signal chain, and I’ve learned how to make awesome punchy drums.

So I’ve become luckier, more successful, mo’ business and more famous over the past year. I feel a lot more driven and confident in my direction now, a feeling I’m sure will only get stronger as more of my ideas play out and the things I’ve worked on come to fruition. I’m really looking forward to employing people and getting more into a game of tactics rather than hard graft. Which has always been my strategy in games – work hard to get things that will automate the tasks where you need to work hard, so you no longer need to work hard. Life is a frickin’ awesome game.

New Years Resolutions

And for the resolutions. Last year I decided to be “responsible”. I am responsible for a large website, partly responsible for a growing band and I am using both to support myself after my student loan petered out. So I definitely feel more responsible. I also feel like I need to hurry up, which I suppose is natural when you’re frustrated about not being where you want to be and is probably good for motivation, but there are plenty of other famous musicians who haven’t got their break until their late twenties, so I suppose that kind of thought is a bit premature just at the moment.

So this year I’ll try for another adjective to describe future Dave; resourceful. I should take everything I’ve got access to and use it to the best of my ability to achieve my many goals.

And it’s time for this year’s specifics. I’ll accompany each goal with a statistical aim to measure the success rate.

By 2012 (before the world ends) I want to:

- Push YAWA even harder, play two more tours and play some festivals (Get 25,000 Facebook fans)
- Bring the Business income to that of a conventional job (Keeping the figure to myself, but it’s high)
- Employ someone full time (one person)
- Increase my personal savings (again, a lot)
- Massively increase the boyinaband pageviews (10,000,000 in the year)
- Become more influential (1,000 Twitter followers on my personal account @DavePBrown)
- Become closer to being big on YouTube (15,000 Subscribers)
- Build up the boyinaband community (25,000 forum members)
- Post Personal Blogs regularly (every week)
- Feel like I can produce music to a professional level (Celldweller/Pendulum/Periphery – that’s totally numerical/achievable)

This is more focused and more ambitious than last years goals, mainly, I assume, because of my success in the past year. I can’t wait to get started and I seriously intend to hit the targets I’ve set, so if you have a moment, you should probably send me a text/e-mail/carrier pidgeon with a message telling me to stop messing about on YouTube/Redditt/Doodle Jump and get back to making things happen.

In the words of an over-enthusiastic early 3D arcade racing game announcer…

Rolling Staaaaaaaaaaaaart!!!

Next Week on Dave’s Blog

So in the coming week, the plan is to…

- Put a plan for my future online (I guess I can borrow heavily from this blog!)
- Work on my guitar and drum tones
- Make an Update video for boyinaband
- Start with regular biab forum meet-ups
- Start developing the boyinaband forum/tutorial system
- Release a new biab sample pack
- Promote biab in a variety of ways
- Try and nail some big producer interviews
- Ask for more free stuff
- Organise the next biab official competition
- Have the first YAWA practice of 2011
- Write a new YAWA song
- Write a new Proxies song

…Told you I was being ambitious this year!

Let’s get it started, Ha!